Many Christians have been praying, fasting, and waiting for years, convinced that God is slow to answer. But what if the delay is not on His side at all? What if the real reason you haven’t seen God move is because God hasn’t seen you move yet?
We love to talk about waiting on God — but there are seasons when God is the One standing still, patiently waiting on us to stop crying, stop complaining, and simply do the thing He already told us to do.
❖ Writter’s Note
Special Spotlight
“A lot of us haven’t seen God move yet because God hasn’t seen us move yet. God says, ‘As for me, I got My part down. I’m just waiting for you to stop whining, crying, complaining… and do what I told you to do.’”
1
When God Takes You the Long Way Around
The first sign that God may be waiting on you shows up in the route He chooses for your life. We assume that if God is truly with us, He will pick the shortest, smoothest, most logical path. But God rarely works that way. Sometimes the longer road is not a punishment — it is the setup for a miracle you could never experience on the direct route.
The miracle was going to happen at the Red Sea — but the Red Sea was not the direct route to the Promised Land. Israel was up in Egypt, the Promised Land was down below, and God took them down to the Red Sea just to bring them back up to the Promised Land. Has God ever taken you way out of the way?
And while He led them the long way around, Pharaoh had second thoughts: “Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us?’” (Exodus 14:5, NKJV)”
They thought, We must have been out of our minds to let all that extra help go. What were we thinking? So Pharaoh mobilized six hundred chariots to go after them.
POINT
A
The long way is often the designed way, not the delayed way.
POINT
B
A detour is not a sign of God’s absence; it is frequently the stage for His glory.
POINT
C
The place that looks like a dead end (the Red Sea) is the exact place God chose for the miracle.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Action Step
Stop reading your detour as rejection. Write down the “long way” God currently has you on — the slow career path, the unexpected relocation, the season that feels like backtracking. Ask Him what He is positioning you for rather than demanding to know why the road is so long. Then keep walking the route He assigned instead of running back to the Egypt He just delivered you from.
2
When God Seems to Be on the Enemy’s Side
The second sign is one of the most painful: it can feel like God is helping your enemy more than He is helping you. You are the one praying, trusting, and staying faithful — yet the people coming against you keep getting ahead. Before you conclude that God has switched sides, look closely at what Scripture actually says. “…The LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt…”
The keyword here is that the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart. When Pharaoh said, “Go get them,” God essentially told Pharaoh, “Hurry up.” To harden someone’s heart means to make them do more of — and do faster — what they already intended to do in the first place. Pharaoh had a change of heart, and God accelerated it.
Have you ever felt like God was more on your unsaved employer’s side than yours? They get all the promotions, but you don’t. Have you ever felt like God was more on your unsaved coworker’s side than yours? More on your unsaved family member’s side than yours? You’re the one looking to God and trusting Him — and yet the problem keeps coming after you, the difficulty keeps chasing you down.
POINT
A
What looks like your enemy’s advantage can be God drawing them into the very place of their defeat.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Action Step
When the wrong people seem to be winning, resist the urge to measure God’s love by their promotions. List the situations where you feel outpaced by the ungodly, then release each one with the reminder that God is positioning, not forgetting. Keep doing right with boldness, trusting that the apparent advantage of your adversary may be the setup for God to get the glory.
3
When You Complain More Than You Praise
The third sign is the quickest to spot because it comes out of our own mouths. The moment pressure rises, our default is not worship — it is complaint. Israel had just watched God devastate Egypt with ten plagues, yet one glance at Pharaoh’s army erased every memory of His faithfulness.
They did exactly what we do to God when it doesn’t look like He is working things out the way we expected.
“Complaining is the native language of a people who have forgotten what God just did.” ~Brain Nfor
POINT
A
Praise rehearses God’s track record; complaint rehearses your fear.
Biblical Context
Israel’s complaint at the Red Sea is the first of many murmurings (Hebrew lun, to grumble) that would define their wilderness generation. This same spirit of complaint later cost that generation the Promised Land (Numbers 14). Scripture treats grumbling not as a harmless emotional vent but as a serious failure to trust the character of God.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Action Step
Audit your words for one full day. Count how many sentences are complaints about your circumstances versus declarations of God’s faithfulness. For every complaint, replace it with a specific memory of something God has already done. Train your mouth to “stand still and see” instead of panicking out loud.
4
When Your Inner Fear Outweighs Your Obedience
The fourth sign is hidden where no congregation can see it — the private war between the confident words you speak and the terror rising inside you.
There is a “missing verse” in the story of the Egyptians, Israel and the Red sea.
❖ Writter’s Note
Special Spotlight
“And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Why do you cry to Me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward.’” (Exodus 14:15, NKJV)
In verses 13 and 14, Moses is the confident preacher: “Don’t be afraid. God’s got this. These Egyptians, they’re not going to mess with you.” But then God turns and asks, “Moses, why are you crying out to Me?”
Here is the problem — nowhere do we read that Moses cried out to God. Moses only spoke to the people. So there is a missing verse. On the outside Moses declared, “Fear not, God is going to deliver us,” but privately, in the middle of the storm, he was pleading, “God, You better come up here and do something, because I’m up here talking all this noise to these people.”
How do we know that’s the missing verse? Because God asks him, “Why are you crying to Me?” — even though Moses never verbally said anything to God. He only spoke confidence to the people while silently panicking before God.
“There are often many battles when we confront a situation — a battle between us and the people, and a battle between us and God. We can confidently calm the people down, but internally we are praying and complaining to God to come rescue the situation.” ~Tony Evans
Moses was preaching the truth, but preaching it with his own internal fear. And here is the honest part: even when we want to gamble on God, we are scared. Even when you quote Scripture to yourself, you’re scared. You’re listening to Christian radio, you’re hearing from God — and you are still scared. The fear was not only in the congregation; it was in the preacher.
POINT
A
Public faith and private fear can live in the same person at the same time.
POINT
B
God hears the prayer you never said out loud — He answers the heart, not just the mouth.
POINT
C
Preaching truth while trembling inside is not hypocrisy; it is the human condition God meets with grace.
Biblical Context
God’s question, “Why do you cry to Me?” reveals that Moses’ real communication with God was non-verbal — an internal groaning God still heard. This anticipates Romans 8:26, where the Spirit intercedes “with groanings which cannot be uttered.” The God of the Exodus responds to the silent cry beneath our confident speeches.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Action Step
Name the gap between what you say and what you feel. If you are speaking faith publicly while drowning in fear privately, bring that fear honestly to God instead of hiding it behind spiritual language. Then let obedience outrun the fear — do the next thing God told you even while your hands are shaking.
5
When You Refuse to Take a Step Without Seeing a Sign
The fifth sign is a stubborn insistence on proof before obedience. Moses kept crying out to God, and God had to interrupt him: “Why are you crying out to Me? Tell the children of Israel to go forward.” There is a time to pray — and there is a time to stop praying and take the step, even while afraid.
“Though I feel afraid, I will take a step.” ~Brain Nfor
Do not keep repeating your fears to God. God told Moses to lift up his staff. You do what God told you to do, and you leave God to do what He is supposed to do. Don’t worry about God — He’s got His part. But He is not going to do His part until you do your part; until you lift up the rod.
“A lot of us haven’t seen God move yet because God hasn’t seen us move yet. His part will only move as you move by faith.” ~Tony Evans
We keep Christmas going all year round — praying about situations endlessly and never moving. “I’m praying about it. I’m fasting about it.” But God wants you to move even in fear, even when faith feels thin. If you haven’t done what God told you to do yet, you won’t see what He can do in your life. So Moses picked up his rod and held it out. Do something with what God has placed in your hand. Many of us are waiting on God while God is waiting on us — and He is not going to move until He sees your hand roll the dice in His favor.
POINT
A
Faith is spelled with your feet, not just your prayers.
POINT
A
Repeating your fears to God can become a substitute for obeying God.
Biblical Context
The command “go forward” (Hebrew nasa, to pull up stakes and set out) was a call to break camp and march toward an un-split sea. God tied the miracle to movement: the waters did not divide until Moses stretched out his hand. Obedience preceded the parting.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Action Step
Identify the one instruction God has already given you that you keep praying about instead of obeying. Set a deadline this week to take the first concrete step — send the email, make the call, start the business, have the conversation — before you feel ready. Let your obedience, not your confidence, be the trigger for God’s intervention.
6
When You See No Visible Miracles in Your Life
The sixth sign is a life with no evidence of the supernatural. The children of Israel experienced not one but a double miracle — and both halves came only after they obeyed.
The wind came and split the water — that is miracle number one. Two walls of water stood on either side, and it took faith to walk between them, because there was no empirical evidence that those walls would not collapse while they were still walking through.
They believed the first half of the miracle. The second half was the dry ground. At the bottom of a sea, the ground should be wet and muddy. But that east wind was so strong it not only walled up the water, it dried out the seabed so there was no mud. They could roll their carts, the horses could travel, the mules could travel — everybody could cross without getting stuck.
- The miracle had two layers — the obvious (split water) and the hidden (dry ground).
- God doesn’t just make a way; He makes a way you can actually travel.
- The same sea that saved the obedient drowned the pursuer.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Action Step
If your walk with God feels miracle-free, examine whether you have ever placed yourself in a position where only God could rescue you. Stop insulating your life so thoroughly that God is never needed. Step into obedience that requires Him to show up — and watch for the hidden second half of the miracle, not just the obvious first half.
7
When You’re Afraid to Bet Everything on God
The seventh sign is the fear of fully gambling your situation on God. There are things you can handle yourself. But there are crises that box you between a rock and a hard place — and the only way out is to bet on God.
If you’ve never gambled on God and seen what He could do when only He could do it, then maybe that’s why God may not be real in your life — because you’ve never bet on Him.” ~Tony Evans
When God puts you out on a cliff, when He puts you on a ledge, when you’re in a pinch, it is because God wants to bring glory to His name.
God orchestrates the impossible so that He alone gets the applause, so He alone is glorified, so He alone receives the credit. The tight spot is not evidence that God forgot you; it is the platform on which He plans to be honored.
- A faith you never risk anything on will never feel real.
- The rock-and-a-hard-place is God’s chosen stage for His glory.
POINT
A
God engineers no-way-out moments so the credit cannot be shared with your own ability.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Action Step
Pinpoint the area where you are hedging your bets — keeping a backup plan that makes God optional. Prayerfully decide where you will fully trust Him without a safety net, and act on it. The point is not recklessness but surrender: let the outcome rest on God so that, when it works, He gets the glory you could never claim for yourself.
8
When You Reject God’s Strategy Because It Looks Foolish
The final sign is refusing God’s instructions because they seem outdated, illogical, or embarrassing. Consider Jericho. Joshua was tasked with taking a city that was sealed shut.
The city was locked up tight like a drum. The walls were so massive no one could simply climb them. Nobody was coming in, nobody was coming out. Joshua stood there trying to figure out how in the world they would take it — and the Commander of the Lord’s army appeared. Joshua bowed and took off his shoes in humility, and God gave him a strategy no military manual had ever contained: “…You shall march around the city”…
If Joshua had consulted a military manual for his instructions, he would never have taken the risk, because the plan made no sense. But when God puts you in a position that doesn’t make sense, He wants you to see His sovereignty — to experience that He alone is God. And when they screamed, the walls came tumbling down. There is nothing like seeing God knock down something you could never knock down, turn around something you could never turn around.
“When God is ready to move, He can shake and bake it, twist it and turn it as He wills.” ~Tony Evans
- God’s strategy will often make you look foolish before it makes you victorious.
- Marching and shouting felt ridiculous — until the walls fell.
- A delayed answer (the land) is not a denied answer in God’s economy.
Biblical Context: The fall of Jericho hinged on the number seven — seven priests, seven trumpets, seven days, seven circuits on the seventh day — a biblical pattern of completeness and divine perfection. The trumpets were shofars, ram’s horns associated with worship and the Year of Jubilee, signaling that this was an act of worship-driven warfare, not conventional siege tactics.
PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Action Step
When God’s leading seems old-fashioned or illogical — radical generosity, forgiveness, public obedience that others will mock — obey it anyway. Write down the “Jericho” you are facing and the strange instruction you sense God giving. Choose His strategy over your spreadsheet, and leave the timing of the walls falling to Him.
Summary & Key Takeaways
The question is not whether God is faithful — Scripture settles that at the Red Sea and at Jericho. The real question is whether you are moving. God has His part down: the sea will split, the walls will fall, the land will come back. But His part only moves as you move by faith. Stop crying about it, stop fasting about it in paralysis, and lift the rod that is already in your hand. The breakthrough you’ve been waiting on may be waiting on you.
“Many of us are waiting on God. God is waiting on us — and He is not going to move until He sees your hand roll the dice in His favor.”
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PERSONAL REFLECTION QUESTION
What is the one instruction God has already given you that you keep praying about instead of obeying — and what step will you take this week to finally move, even while you’re afraid?
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✝ A Prayer to Strengthen Your Spirit
Father, I confess that I have often mistaken my own delay for Yours. I have been crying out to You about situations You already gave me the power to confront. Forgive me for complaining more than I praise, and for hiding my fear behind confident words. Lord, give me the courage to lift the rod in my hand and go forward even when the sea has not yet parted. Where You have put me in a tight place, help me to bet everything on You, trusting that You are setting the stage for Your glory. And when Your strategy makes no sense to me, give me the humility to obey anyway, like Joshua before the walls of Jericho. I stop waiting and I start moving — do Your part as I do mine, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
